Daily Bafflements

• Dissent has a good piece on how tech bros and billionaires are threatening to overwhelm Seattle’s culture of radical culture and politics. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, this $100 million penthouse is getting a 95 percent tax cut.

• Today in Labor Strikes: Workers at nine oil refineries and chemical plants are staging walkouts in the first nationwide pact since 1980. TIME reports that “If a full strike of union workers is called, USW says it could disrupt as much as 64% of U.S. fuel production.”

• “In 2012, 80% of the large contributions to superPACs went to Republicans,” the Brookings Institution’s Darrell West tells the New York Daily News. “Democrats may get buried by GOP cash in 2016.”

• Today in Oh Really: Ethicists at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh question the impact of hospital advertising.